How to Build a Family Schedule That Works

I have never been a highly scheduled person. I dabbled with the baby feeding schedules, but for some reason I could never get the babies to understand my plan.

“No, no, no, little one. You see, right here on the 9:00 hour, the schedule clearly states that you are to be asleep. WHY YOU NO SLEEP?????”

I get it. All schedules must have wiggle room. Life doesn’t go as planned. Ever. Well, sometimes, maybe?

I married into a family of the most scheduled people I’ve ever met. I’m going to tell you a story before I get to my point here because this story is relevant and unbelievable. Seriously.

Nonna and Aunt Janet came to visit us in 2010. Joshua was turning 5, Caleb was 4, and Daniel was in utero. We lived in Washington, D.C., not in the suburbs, but actually in the city.

Of course, Nonna came with an itinerary for all that she and Janet intended to do during their visit. Upon their arrival, they discovered that our little boys were super sick with strep throat.

Nonna was undeterred. “Okay. So on Thursday, we’ll do the Space Museum. Then on Friday, I figure we’ll be sick with strep throat. We’ll take a day or two off to rest. On Sunday, we’ll hit the Holocaust Museum and Mount Vernon. Monday we’ll see Arlington, and Tuesday we’ll get ready for our trip back.”

I kid you not, folks, they developed strep throat as scheduled. Poor Aunt Janet, who came down with her sickness in the middle of the Space Museum. Let’s just say that for some people, strep throat is also a puke bug. It was a trip to remember.

Were our travelers caught unawares with this sickness? Heck no. That’s the power of the plan!

My friend Kim convinced me to buy this book:

This came in handy for several reasons:

Schedule suggestions

THE KIT!!! It includes this sticky tack stuff, which is a must have for the final color-coded-schedule building step.

But the amount of priority questioning that has ensued from working on my family schedule still has my head spinning! Talk about staring your choices in the face!

How to Build Your Schedule:

#1. Make an exhaustive list of every single thing that you need to accomplish during the average weekday. If your family has sports 3 nights a week, include that. Don’t forget to include the fact that it takes 30 minutes to get ready for said activities, 15 minutes to drive there, and 15 minutes to get home. All together, one soccer team may actually add up to 5 hours of your week, like Caleb’s team!

Then break that into 30 minute or hour increments. Here’s an example of my worksheet:

my daily activity worksheet

You may find it awfully hard to get everything into 24 hours. Lightbulb moment that you’re trying to do too much….Just sayin’. I certainly have that problem.

That was not my final draft.

#2. Do that worksheet for each family member.

Consult the kids to ask them what is important to them. Make sure they are having time to practice whatever their craft or skill is. I tried to build in time for bicycles, drawing, and baseball in the yard.

#3. The fun part: Get your kit out. Choose 1 color for each family member. Write all the activities on the appropriate size squares. They come in 30 minute squares and hour-long squares.

#4. Cut out the squares, and arrange them on your master schedule: 3 legal size papers with time slots. Use the sticky tac on the back of each square to hold it temporarily in place.

I did John David’s first. Younger children have the most needs to consider. Older children have harder set times, though. If soccer is at 5, you can’t really move that square around.

Here’s ours:

The morning schedule. This works for 3/5 of our weekdays.

Midday Schedule: Also works for only 3/5 of our days.

Technically, each evening is different for us, so I tried to allow for that with “Soccer/AWANA/Family time”

Now that I’ve gotten all of this done, soccer season is wrapping up, and we switch to the basketball schedule. I don’t think it will change too much, though.

I will warn you. This activity may lead you to question EVERYTHING in your life.

I kept thinking, “Wait a minute. This is crazy. Something more must be delegated!”

Or “Why do I blog at all? Should I drop the blog?”

“How clean does the house really need to be?” *chuckle* Alan does his share of the cleaning, believe me!

How the schedule has helped so far:

I love that I have a plan in place. Also, I don’t have to be the bad guy with the kids.

“Mom, is this the last thing we have to do??”

“No. Go look at the schedule.”

“Awww man!!”

“Sorry. It’s on the schedule.”

Also, I have gotten more done at school. When the schedule wasn’t written down, by 1:30 I start to run out of energy and say things like, “Eh, you’ve done enough, go ahead.” The schedule holds my feet to the ground with, “Oh, yeah, you really should do handwriting.”

They should. So should I, but that’s why adults get to use computers.

The schedule also helped me find a way to alternate seat work with fun. I don’t know why I’m such a hands-on teacher, but I’ve just accepted that as my teaching style. I’d love to be the mom that has the kids working quietly while I tend to the house, but that’s just not me. I walk them through division, I read to them because I love it, and I hover nearby as much as I can. That’s my teaching style. We talk all day long.

Meanwhile, the schedule says that right now I’m sitting on my porch, when in fact, we are all inside. I’m procrastinating letting JD up from nap while I blog.

I mean, schedules are a wonderful TOOL, but let’s not marryour schedules.

Hope you all have a good time this weekend, passing out candy to adorable little trick-or-treaters! We will have a Darth Vader, a Boba Fett, a Snoopy, and a Yoda. I promise to take photos, if you promise to do the same!

April, this is really amazing, and I commend you. Neat how you consulted the boys and what is important to them. It would make them feel a part of things (even with the handwriting) 🙂
Thanks for sharing, and keep up the great work! 🙂
~Carl~Carl Wright recently posted…The Race Of My Life

Oh that strep throat story! Oh how terrible! I am a planner, but somehow 4 babies later my planning skills aren’t so good anymore! I like the ides of this book and then the worksheets. I can see how with home schooling something like this would be a HUGE help! Happy Halloween to you and yours!queenmommyjen recently posted…Man-Day Post: How Not To Suck On Periscope

Oh, I just got goosebumps thinking of how fun it is to do schedules 🙂 I WOULD marry my schedule if I could – ha! But sadly, you are right…there are way too many unscheduled things that come up to do that. Having the right attitude about those disruptions is always a challenge for me. Loved this post, and seeing the schedules. I love the “dirt” time. Each child is most certainly a wonderfully unique individual. I just love all the colors – oh my, what fun! Maybe it’s the teacher coming out in me…

How well I remember that trip to D.C. And my bout with strep throat bi remember at the doctor, Donna said she didn’t need to be strep tested, she was fine…which translated into “it really doesn’t fit into my schedule”…and love, and behold, she was strep positive, too! However, lucky me, I got the strep to end all strep!! Not as bad as the year David was a strep carrier for about 4-5 months. HE wasn’t sick but Alyson and I couldn’t shake it. That was a bad year!
I love the color coded schedule, but then you’ve never seen my years of color coded calendars during my kids’ busiest years!! I’ll have to show you sometime!

Ha! I didn’t know that part about Donna at the doc. I never thought I’d be the person with a color coded schedule, but now I see why. I bet yours was good. I never intended to work and raise kids–too much stress for me, and yet home schooling feels a lot like working…. I don’t know how long I’ll do this. I did not even notice your errors. I am the worst ever at phone typing, so no worries. I don’t even try to hard. The autocorrect errors make it funny.aprilmomoffour recently posted…Home School Progress Report: Week 11, Year 2

This seriously hurt my brain when I first looked at your schedule, but once you broke it down I understood. Obviously I don’t have kids yet but I can see how this would be beneficial, especially for all those “when’s dinner” or “what do we have to do” etc questions. I know my siblings and I always bugged my mom with those hahaKels @Blonder Side recently posted…When You Feel Like Quitting

I am horrible when it comes to sticking with schedules! This one looks pretty great though! Thank you for sharing this at the #SmallVictoriesSundayLinkup!Echo recently posted…Small Victories Sunday #36

I’ve never seen this system but it’s a great idea. As a mom of 3 boys, I can totally relate! Thanks for sharing with Small Victories Sunday Linkup. Pinning to our linkup board and hope you found some great posts to visit this week!Tanya @ Mom’s Small Victories recently posted…Small Victories Sunday Linkup {75}

Confession: It was very fun and super enlightening to create the schedule. Amazing, color coded, fabulousness. But I am a free spirit, and the truth is I was never able to truly follow it. I still think making it benefitted us though. Eventually, I found what worked best for us was making a giant– reasonable–checklist of our 6 most important school things to do that day on a wipe-off board. I let the boys pick what order they did them in as much as possible. They loved that. They would even coordinate together to share the iPad for Classical Conversations and things like that.

Hey! My name is April, and I am a mom of four boys and military wife of 15 years. This is a blog where you will find parenting stories to make you laugh as well as helpful stories to encourage you in your faith and bring a smile to your face. Life is hard enough, so let's have fun here. Also, I love visiting fun places and taking photos, so be sure to check out my travel section.